August 26, 2024
(Axios) – Biosecurity experts are calling on governments to set new guardrails in an effort to limit the risks posed by advanced AI models being applied to biology. Why it matters: AI models trained on genetic sequences have double-edged potential … Read More
August 22, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – In March, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink introduced its first human trial participant, a quadriplegic who showed the world how he could control a computer cursor with just his thoughts. On Wednesday, the company said … Read More
August 22, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – Futurists who write about the destiny of humankind have imagined all sorts of changes. We’ll all be given auxiliary chromosomes loaded with genetic goodies, or maybe we’ll march through life as a member of a pod … Read More
August 19, 2024
(Undark) – In a June essay in The New England Journal of Medicine, Hendriks and a co-author, Christine Grady, outlined some of the thorny ethical questions related to brain research: What is the best way to protect the long-term interests … Read More
August 19, 2024
(New York Times) – In a new frontier for deep brain stimulation, researchers used A.I. to develop individualized algorithms, which helped a skateboarder and other patients with Parkinson’s disease. In the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature … Read More
August 16, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – The US government just hired a researcher who thinks we can beat aging with fresh cloned bodies and brain updates. A US agency pursuing moonshot health breakthroughs has hired a researcher advocating an extremely radical plan … Read More
August 16, 2024
(The Conversation) – I’m a medical anthropologist and bioethicist who studies the values and experiences driving prenatal gene therapy developments, including genome editing. Human prenatal genome editing has not happened yet – as far as we know. Prenatal genome editing … Read More
August 15, 2024
(The Atlantic) – As artificial limbs become more advanced, branding is becoming almost inescapable. Bionic (or myoelectric) limbs, which are operated by muscle and nerve impulses to more closely mimic the movements and operation of a real limb, have evolved … Read More
August 15, 2024
(Reuters) – A man with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who had lost his ability to speak has been able to communicate with a Blackrock Neurotech text-to-speech brain implant, researchers said in one of two new studies showing the promise of … Read More
August 14, 2024
(STAT News) – STAT spoke with Mariska Vansteensel, a neuroscientist at University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands and president of the international BCI Society, about the field and about a new study that she and her colleagues just published … Read More
August 8, 2024
(New York Times) – After promising results in monkeys, scientists plan to test the new treatment in a few people with H.I.V. Scientists have developed a new weapon against H.I.V.: a molecular mimic that invades a cell and steals essential … Read More
August 6, 2024
(Ars Technica) – The physician-scientist had just mastered a new chromosome-staining technique in a year-long sabbatical at Oxford. But it was in the dining room of her Chicago home where she made the discovery that would dramatically alter the course … Read More
July 30, 2024
(Wall Street Journal) – Medical tests using small amounts of blood are being rolled out, achieving what the Silicon Valley startup couldn’t The rise and fall of Theranos—the Silicon Valley startup that promised to revolutionize blood testing but ended dissolved, … Read More
July 29, 2024
(Axios) — Data to train AI models increasingly comes from other AI models in the form of synthetic data, which can fill in chatbots’ knowledge gaps but also destabilize them. (Read More)
July 26, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – He Jiankui, the Chinese biophysicist whose controversial 2018 experiment led to the birth of three gene-edited children, says he’s returned to work on the concept of altering the DNA of people at conception, but with a … Read More
July 22, 2024
(Associated Press) – Wide-eyed piglets rushing to check out the visitors to their unusual barn just might represent the future of organ transplantation – and there’s no rolling around in the mud here. The first gene-edited pig organs ever transplanted … Read More
July 15, 2024
(New York Magazine) – His brain tumor was a hopeless case. Then an experimental medicine made it melt away. The day before, Choi and Maus had treated their first patient in a clinical trial for an aggressive brain cancer called … Read More
July 10, 2024
(New York Times) – Lisa Pisano, 54, lived with the organ for 47 days. She was the first patient to receive both a heart pump and an organ transplant, doctors said. The patient, Lisa Pisano, was critically ill, suffering from … Read More
July 9, 2024
(Undark) – One person’s DNA became the centerpiece of a genetic sequence used by biologists the world over. Did he agree to that? To piece the story together, Undark reviewed more than 100 emails, letters, and other digital documents housed … Read More
July 9, 2024
(GEN) – Porteus is a scientific co-founder of CRISPR Therapeutics, the company that launched the exa-cel CRISPR trial that culminated in the approval of Casgevy in December 2023. With the latest companies he has co-founded—first Graphite Bio, now Kamau Therapeutics— … Read More
July 4, 2024
(New York Times) – Researchers at the University of Tokyo published findings on a method of attaching artificial skin to robot faces to protect machinery and mimic human expressiveness. Engineers in Japan are trying to get robots to imitate that … Read More
July 4, 2024
(Nature) – The United Kingdom has developed its first rules to guide research using human embryo models. Scientists say they are pleased the country has clarified its position on the fast-moving field. The voluntary code of practice, published today, prohibits … Read More
July 1, 2024
(MIT Technology Review) – When someone loses part of a leg, a prosthetic can make it easier to get around. But most prosthetics are static, cumbersome, and hard to move. A new neural interface connects a bionic limb to nerve … Read More
June 20, 2024
(New York Times) – In high-tech labs, workers are generating data to train A.I. algorithms to design better medicine, faster. But the transformation is just getting underway. The lab, about two-thirds the size of a football field, is a data … Read More
June 17, 2024
(The New Yorker) – At the time, Santos was at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Paris, studying genes that allow some bacteria to live longer than others. But after her grandfather’s death she decided to focus instead on new ways … Read More
